Conquer Club

There is a muscularity about para-triathlete Joe Townsend, his arms tattooed and powerful, as the former Royal Marine Commando leans in to explain his thrill at triathlon being included at the Paralympic Games for the first time in Rio. He is sitting in a wheelchair. He lost both legs in 2008, when he stood on an improvised explosive device while on a morning foot patrol in Afghanistan. He was 20.

“I was 17 when I started training with the Royal Marines,” explains Townsend. “I passed out just shortly after my 18th birthday and was then deployed to Afghanistan in September 2007. I enjoyed my time out there. I was gutted when my incident happened and I had to leave, but it’s a bit like sport: you train for it and train for it and you’re happiest when you’re racing and you’re competing and doing what you trained for.”

Yes this was war, not sport. But injured servicemen have always had a special place at the spiritual heart of the Paralympic Movement. The Games began in Stoke Mandeville after the Second World War when neurosurgeon Sir Ludwig Guttmann created methods of rehabilitating paraplegic veterans with spinal injuries through sporting endeavour, taking many of those men away from anguish and suicidal thoughts.

Townsend takes up his story. “I was out in Afghanistan just shy of 5½ months and was coming towards the end of my tour when I stepped on the improvised explosive device. It was very unfortunate but these things happen. It’s part and parcel of the job, I suppose.

“It was Feb 8, 2008, and we’d been out on an early-morning patrol. Quite often we’d get up and out while it was still dark. We patrolled the local area and made sure there wasn’t anything going on in our area that we didn’t want to happen. Then, on return to the forward operating base, I was patrolling through a ploughed field and was the point man of the section, which meant I was walking out front, and the rest of the guys were following behind. I trod on the improvised explosive device, which was buried in the floor.

saxitoxin wrote:If they really wanted people to care about the Paralympics they would abolish them completely and just incorporate events like wheelchair basketball and boccia into the Olympics.

A lot of people think Harvard is the best school, some people think Yale is the best school. But if Yale changed its named to Paraharvard, or Semiharvard, or Pseudoharvard, no one would be all that interested in it.

#BRANDINGBITCHES

DoomYoshi wrote:Oxford University Press > Harvard University Press

that reminds me of the time I was in Cambridge. I asked the guy... hey, do you know where Oxford's at? and he said "here in Cambridge we do not end sentences with prepositions" so i was all like do you know where Oxford's at, asshole?